


Bunker Life

by FeyduBois



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic Dean Winchester, Fluff, Gen, Men of Letters Bunker, Old Movies, Sickfic, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 14:39:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2351972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeyduBois/pseuds/FeyduBois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just another day in the Men of Letters bunker with Charlie Bradbury visiting. Charlie claims the Winchesters as her family by dousing them with non-sexy bodily fluids, Dean starts clucking, Sam thinks chick-flicks are okay if they're vintage, and other incidents of a domestic day in the bunker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bunker Life

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a comment fic for a challenge from cowboyguy over at Livejournal but then it morphed into it's own thing and got too big to post there. The theme was supposed to be "beginnings" and the prompt was "gen please, set in season 8 or early season 9, just give me some Charlie bonding with the boys. Bonus: she's sick, won't admit it since she's been on her own for so long and then the boys take care of her." with the notion that Charlie is beginning to trust again. I don't know if I hit that bit necessarily, but I hope you enjoy it anyway!  
> The only warning I can think of mentioning is for sex toys but no one's using them except to embarrass Dean.  
> Set early season 9, before Charlie leaves for Oz.

“You should spend the night at least,” Dean said as Charlie began walking towards the door, “It's three in the morning.”

“You forget who you're talking to, us gamers regularly go weeks on four hours a night of sleep.”

“We've got the space. It's no problem.” A spontaneous 'hey, I'm in the area' Game of Thrones viewing had turned into a Game of Thrones marathon followed by a few rounds of Mario Cart and vast quantities of time and Red Bull had since been consumed. 

Sam was looking much better since the Trials, however he still tired really easily and after he had fallen asleep on Dean's bed (“Guess I'm taking Sam's room tonight...”) Charlie was ready to call it a night.

Charlie felt unusually tired too, and she suspected that it had to do with the tickle at the back of her throat and the stuffiness in her head. It was instinct for her to hide illness. Her first foster home after her parents' accident had proven the danger of that; the stress of it had taken a toll on her young body and she'd caught bronchitis shortly after and two weeks later she was moved to another home. Weakness, it seemed, was unacceptable, and showing it would result in rejection.

But she was so tired, and surely they wouldn't notice? Their place was way nicer than a hotel (also a million times more rad) and resting was more appealing than driving into the approaching morning.

“You've already got other house-guests.”

“You mean the prophet only leaves his room for meals and the demon-king of snark we have tied up in the basement? Trust me, you're way better company.”

“You want me to hang out?”

Dean nodded, “Well, yeah, I like you. As a friend,” he clarified, “Kevin's all caught up in his own head, and while it's fun to poke Crowley I try not to make a habit of it, and Sam... Sam has been sleeping like it's his latest hobby.” Also, there was that whole not-trusting-Gadreel thing that he wasn't going to talk about.

“Sure, I'll stay.”

“Sweet. I've got a guest-room ready, this way m'lady,” Dean led Charlie into the hallway and offered her a bedroom at the end of the hall, next to the washroom, “If you need anything you know where my room is.”

“Yep,” Charlie was already yawning and kicking off her shoes, dropping her 'Bag of Holding' messenger bag on a chair, “Goodnight Dean-o.”

“Goodnight Charlie.”

Charlie woke up feeling like shit and it began to dawn on her what she was sick with; she was on her way back from a gaming convention. Think of a giant room full of computers and sweaty gamers, most of whom have poor personal hygiene standards, breathing all over each other, not to mention eating, partying, and generally socializing for an entire weekend... now consider the free-for-all this must be for a virus to run rampant and mutate into something truly horrific. She sighed and coughed into her fist trying to muffle the sound when she heard Dean knock on the door.

“Charlie? You alive? It's noon, even Sam's awake! I'm making breakfast. You want scrambled eggs and bacon?”

“Yes please!” she called, not liking how strained her voice sounded.

“Better get dressed and get down here before the prophet eats everything then.”

Kevin called out something that she didn't quite catch while she pulled on her clothes from the day before and made her way to the washroom to freshen up. There she gazed at her reflection in the mirror and realized, with dismay, that she looked about as fabulous as she felt. She blew her nose and washed her face with some warm water, hoping to bring back some colour, and then decided that was as good as it got without makeup and attempted to put some bounce in her steps as she made her way to the bunker's dining/common room.

Sam was sitting at the long table next to Kevin who was showing him the key-points in some really old, obscure book he'd stumbled across while Dean, wearing a plain black apron, bustled around with plates and condiments. Charlie took a stack of plates and cutlery from him and laid out four place settings while they exchanged the obligatory good mornings.

“Whatcha guys reading?” she asked the bookworms.

“The diary of Dante Alighieri. He was the guy who wrote the Divine Comedy...”

“You mean the Inferno?”

“Yeah, that was book one... Inferno, Hell, was followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso... Purgatory and Heaven. Some people believe that his books were more than allegorical, that he actually journeyed to those places with the help of relics, or some say maybe psychedelics.”

Dean snorted, “Yeah, I've been to all three, you don't need antiques or drugs, all you gotta do is piss off the wrong people and die, and let me tell you, Dante doesn't get any of those places right.”

“Well, maybe they changed in the centuries between his time and ours,” Sam pointed out.

Charlie was struck by a moment of oddness at sitting at the breakfast table with two men who had been to such places, and come back, and another who was a bonafide prophet of the lord. All she had done was play the game Dante's Inferno, she hadn't even read the book. Quietly she poured herself a cup of coffee out of the carafe on the table and then added some cream. A tickle built up in her chest and she quickly chugged down some coffee to quell it, though it was a touch too hot still.

“Geek time's over, put away the book or risk getting ketchup on it.”

“This manuscript is over 400 years old!” Sam protested.

“Yeah, well move it then.”

They did, quickly. Dean began to lay out the big dishes on trivets he'd put down when they weren't paying attention; there was a stack of banana pancakes tall enough that it was threatening to tip over, a pan of eggs scrambled with green onions, plenty of bacon crisped to perfection laid out on paper towel, and a pan of sausages soaking in their own juices. It looked amazing. Charlie's stomach grumbled appreciatively at it and they all tucked in, complimenting Dean's cooking between mouthfuls. He was really enjoying having a real kitchen and starting to find his culinary groove. Yeah, Dean's cooking tended towards coronary-busting greasy and southwestern spicy, and probably wasn't the healthiest type of food in the world, but it was good. Really good. Charlie hadn't woken up with much appetite initially but she found it pretty quick. It was shocking how much Kevin put away but he was, after all, still a growing teen. 

“If you ever stop hunting you should open a restaurant,” said Charlie.

“Yeah, don't expect that anytime soon,” Dean chuckled, “Ellen offered me a job once.”

“Really?” said Sam, “I didn't know that.”

“It was after you left for Stanford. I had things to do so I didn't take her up, tempting as it was with Jo at seventeen bouncing around the Roadhouse.”

“Who are Ellen and Jo?” asked Kevin.

“They were old friends of ours,” explained Sam, “they ran a pub that catered mostly to hunters.”

“They both died in the almost-apocalypse.”

Being friends with the Winchester was often dangerous; no one said it, though they were all thinking it as the conversation began to move towards an uncomfortable direction. Suddenly Charlie coughed loudly and she didn't stop right away, but when she did she sneezed, turning her head and lightly spraying Dean.

He surprisingly didn't look grossed out, more concerned actually, “You okay?”

“I'm fine,” she quickly countered, cleaning herself up with a napkin.

Sam scrutinized her, “You're pale today.”

“Dude, I'm always pale.”

“Are you sick?” asked Dean.

The gig was up, her shoulders slumped, “Just a cold, I'm fine.

“Do you want some tea?” Sam said, “we've got this ginger stuff, it's actually pretty good.”

“No, no, I've got coffee.”

“At least have some OJ,” said Dean, pouring her a glass of it.

“Just a bit... woah, that's plenty.”

Kevin vanished pretty quickly after breakfast and it was revealed why when Dean announced, “I cooked so I'm not doing dishes.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said, “Charlie's helping.”

“Dishes?”

Sam grimaced, “Yeah, and we don't have a dishwasher I'm afraid, we've got to do the the old-school way.”

“That's fine,” said Charlie, “It was worth the food. I don't really cook much myself, never graduated past mac'n'cheese.”

“I don't even know where Dean learned it,” Sam said.

“It's my other super power,” he said, bringing several cups into the kitchen to get them started.

She stood, taking a moment to blow her nose in her napkin again.

“I'll wash, you dry?” Sam asked, picking up the stack of plates and leaving Charlie to grab some larger platters.

“Sounds good.”

“Wash your hands before you start,” Dean reminded her, “Germs.”

“Of course.”

“You know the men of letters had some pretty intense quarantine protocol,” Dean said conversationally while he poured himself a second cup of coffee and helped them bring condiments back into the kitchen and put them away, “I found some masks and stuff last week, even an isolation room with double doors in the infirmary.”

“They experienced the Spanish influenza,” reasoned Sam, “And probably some weird supernatural-related stuff, I haven't even catalogued a tenth of all their case files yet.”

“The archives in this place must be overwhelming,” said Charlie.

“They are, but I'm working my way through them one at a time,” said Sam.

“And exhausting yourself,” added Dean.

Sam glared back.

“Bitch. Forced break tonight, I found a heap of old movies on reels,” Dean, sipping his coffee now, leaned up against the counter, “there's an old copy of Casablanca, not to mention a bunch of Westerns. Someone had good taste.”

Sam nodded, “We've got a couple of projectors that definitely work.”

“Ooh, sounds like fun,” said Charlie.

“Are you staying another day then?” Dean asked, an edge of eagerness making its way into his voice.

“I could,” It wasn't like she needed to be anywhere.

“Stagecoach with John Wayne,” Dean teased.

Charlie laughed, and then that dissolved into a coughing fit, “Okay, yes... twist my rubber arm.”  
Dean finished his coffee, checked on Crowley, and then went out to pick up some groceries and run a few other errands, leaving Kevin in his room and Charlie and Sam to finish up the dishes. 

Charlie was thinking to herself in the companionable quietude, reflecting on the strange domesticity of the moment, these men behaving as if every other day they weren't beheading vampires, exorcising demons, or stopping the apocalypse.... what a strange planet this was! She felt warm and slow and it was a bit of an effort to lift the heavy stack of plates into a high cupboard. Sam took note, “Why don't you go sit down, I'll finish up in here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

Charlie scampered back into the common room and began rifling through the drawers of artifacts, most of which were marked only by small brown handwritten labels with numbers that corresponded, presumably, with files. This place was like the lair of a Bond-villain.

Without Sam's scrutiny she was free to cough and sneeze as necessary but when he walked in she waved at the cabinets, “Dust.”

“Uh-huh,” he didn't sound like he believed her but pretty soon they were geeking out over all the weird stuff tucked away all over the place. There were a few devices Sam wanted her to look at and see if she could figure it out. She wondered a little at the bunker's interior systems, they seemed to all run of their own accord, without manual input, and it was weird, but they'd yet to find a control panel and Sam didn't want anyone to start screwing around with it lest they fuck something up beyond repair so they decided to stick to playing with things that weren't hard-wired into the building. They found something that they were pretty certain was some kind of steampunk EMF reader, older by far than most of the bunker's paraphernalia, that they were attempting to get to work.

Dean returned and put away the groceries and filled the beer fridge and tossed in a couple loads of laundry. He entered the common room with a large basket of towels and began folding them there, cracking open his first beer of the day. Sam looked at it and Dean responded with, “What? It's Mexican beer so it doesn't count, it's pretty much water.” 

Again Charlie was struck by the bizarre juxtaposition of white towels, Dos Equis, and weird vintage devices spread across the tabletop.

“What others are you having trouble with?” asked Charlie.

“This one,” Sam said, pulling out what appeared to be a rubber ball on the end of a hand-crank egg beater, although the electrical cord at the other end was completely baffling, “Most of the items have tags of some kind, this one only said 'Property of Maria Svalbert'.”

“I think...” Charlie coughed into her fist when her voice died, and then tried again, “I think I've seen one of those before. Just a sec.” She punched a few words into a search engine and then a slow grin spread over her face, “Yep. It's a circa 1870s device for treating hysteria.”

“Hysteria, eh?” Sam, grinning, compared the picture on her tablet to the device, “Yeah, I think this is the model. I wonder who Maria was.”

“How on Earth is that,” Dean pointed at it, “thing supposed to work when some Victorian chick is shrieking her lungs out?”

“Not hysteria like that,” said Sam.

“Hysteria like what then?”

Charlie couldn't help giggling, “In the Victorian period any time a proper lady acted out they would diagnose her with hysteria. Hysteria was often treated with, ah, manual massage, sometimes using devices like this.”

“Massage?” 

Dean wasn't seeming to get it. Sam went the direct route: “It's a vibrator, Dean.”

“...oh. Well then. That's...”

Sam chuckled. 

Charlie cackled, “Your face is red.”

“Yeah. Whatever. So's yours.”

“Only 'cause you've got the heat cranked.”

Sam looked at her askance, “No, we don't. I don't even know how the heat works in the bunker, but if  
anything it's a bit cool.”

Dean swooped down in full mother-hen mode, pressing the back of his hand up against Charlie's forehead, “Hmm... yeah, you've got a low fever.”

Charlie slid back, looking a touch offended, “What? I don't think I...”

Sam replaced Dean's hand with his own, pressing his palms to her flaming cheeks and making a sound of agreement, “Mhmm, she does. Tylenol?”

“No, not yet.”

“You always medicate me right away,” Sam sounded offended.

“Only because you like to spike high at 103 right off the runway for fun. Normal people don't do that.”

Sam rolled his eyes though he knew it was true, probably had to do with running hot to begin with, or the demon-blood maybe, and it had been even more pronounced in the Trials.

“A low one is good,” Dean explained, “it burns the virus out.”

Charlie sat, feeling like she was a child being petted and talked over by parents. It was a new sensation for her and actually it wasn't bad; though she initially was a bit miffed at being left out of the conversation, she admitted to herself that maybe they were right because she felt a bit woozy and, “Dizzy,” she mumbled, laying her face down on the blessedly cool tabletop.

“I think it's time for you to lay down,” said Dean, nodding to Sam who stood up.

“I could do that,” Charie agreed. Only, she wasn't expecting to suddenly be picked up bridal-style by the Sasquatch of a man that was Sam Winchester and she flailed a bit, “Um... what? You don't need to... I can walk.”

“Stop wiggling,” said Sam, “You're light but I could still drop you if you squirm too much.”

“Daybed?” Dean asked.

“Sounds good,” Sam nodded and made for the room they had set up. It was a side room of the library,  
totally dark when the lights were off, where they had made up a couch into a sort of daybed with a side table and a small projector, another armchair nearby. This was where Sam had spent much of his time during the Trials, with easy access to the library, a powder room next door, and everything he could require close at hand. He gently deposited Charlie on the daybed atop a pile of cushions.

“I'm going to make tea,” said Dean, heading out to do so and talking to himself, “And soup... tomato rice or chicken noodle? I just bought chicken, I'll do that, it's traditional...”

Sam settled Charlie under a flannel blanket, adjusting the pillows around her into a nest.

“You realize I'm capable of taking care of myself?” she asked, “I've been doing it a long time.”

“I do,” said Sam, “But it's nice to let yourself be pampered once in awhile, besides, once Dean gets like this there's no stopping him.”

Charlie saw that Sam knew what he was talking about; he was usually the target of Dean's mother-hennery, “He's practically clucking.”

“I used to wish sometimes we had another little brother or sister to take the attention away from me,” he grinned at Charlie, “Tag, you're it.”

“Can we at least get a movie or something going?”

“Sure.”

Sam set up the projector and put Roman Holiday onto the reel. He figured it was a good one to start with Dean out of the room since it was pretty much a chick-flick. Also, Charlie probably wouldn't hold out too long; already she was dozing off a little, trying (unsuccessfully) to get comfortable on the couch between fits of coughing and sneezing.

“Sit up,” Sam instructed her. She did and he sat down, pulling a pillow onto his lap and instructing her to settle down there. She complied, not protesting when Sam palmed her forehead again and tried to disguise it as stroking her hair. For the first time in a long time, she felt fairly okay being physically close to someone she wasn't sexually involved with.

Just as Charlie finally was feeling warm and cozy enough to maybe close her eyes Dean came in, “Got tea for everyone, it's preventative as well as curative.” 

Sam began to protest.

“Your immune system is shit right now,” Dean said, handing him a mug once Charlie had half sat up again, still leaning against Sam's shoulders, her hair askew and cheeks rosy. She accepted a mug as well, wrapping her hands around it as if to leech out the warmth. She'd been too hot, but now she felt chilled.

Sam was about to say something else when he caught a whiff of the drink being handed to him,  
“Lemon, ginger, and... rum?”

“Yep. Bit of honey too.”

Sam hummed in appreciation as he took at tiny sip of the hot liquid, “Oh, that's good.”

“You bet it is,” Dean glanced at the projector screen, “Roman Holiday, huh?”

“It's not a chick-flick, back then they made films for all audiences.”

“Uh-huh. I'll be in the kitchen... with my intact masculinity.”

“Thank you for this,” said Sam, raising his mug.

“Yeah, yeah, soup should be ready soon.”

Charlie's nose began to run as she breathed in the steam, watching Audrey Hepburn throw a hissy fit.

“Bring tissues!” called Sam.

“When I get a chance.”

“Sooner is better,” added Charlie.

“What's the rush?” Dean asked, poking his head back in just as Charlie sprayed Sam's arm with an enormous sneeze, “Oh... gross. Be right back with that.”

“You mad?” she asked.

“I would be if you weren't so pathetic right now,” Sam said, and petted her head with his non-snotted arm.

“She's covered us in non-sexy bodily fluids,” said Dean when he returned, “We are now officially unofficially related.”

“I always wanted a big brother... and a nanny.”

Dean tossed the tissues at Charlie's head.

Sam mostly shielded her, chuckling to himself the box bounced off harmlessly, “I think this is the start of a beautiful platonic relationship.”


End file.
